| Andrespetmonkey said: Wow, well first of all scandinavians aren't brainwashed borderline servents to a dictator. Secondly, when did I say or how do "scandinavians think they're better off than the rest of the world". |
The vast majority of my (surprisingly many) conversations with Scandinavians are what make me believe this. Unless I'm getting a very unrepresentative sample, the "we're number one" attitude seems to be more common there than anywhere else in the Western world besides Canada.
And they may not be brainwashed to worship a dictator, but they may well be influenced by living in small countries that have done little to influence the course of world history and feel the need to develop a superiority complex to counter their inferiority complex.
| Andrespetmonkey said: all of these people now living in england with the exception of one- so they do have a point of comparison. |
Why have they emigrated, if their home country is so great? Doesn't make any sense to me!
Anyway, if their point of comparison is England, of all places, of course they'll think their home country is great. It's a pretty bad comparison. Even Poles are going home in droves because they realised they were better off back home.
| Andrespetmonkey said: My point is that with the governments running Sweden, Norway, Finland and iceland, the countries are very successful and is a great place to live, statistics say it, the people say it, the tourists say it. You have yet to present a convincing contradictory argument to this |
What statistics? This is what the socialist-biased Human Development Index has to say about quality of life:
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The US ranks ahead of all of them except Norway. And Norway is the Western world's only oil-state.
From what I can see, it looks like the key to having a happy country isn't having socialism, it's having a shitload of oil in your back yard.
As for what the tourists say: since when did tourists ever get an accurate picture of the countries they visit? Do you think they visited the slums in Malmo? No, they visited the nice places.
| Andrespetmonkey said: I wouldn't consider myself a socialist but at least I can accept the fact that socialist systems do work in some cases, why can't you? |
I love how you've just tried to twist it so that you're now the sensible centrist who accepts facts he doesn't like and I'm some rabid extremist.
Please try to be more intellectually honest when you argue and stop arguing to moderation. And stop assuming that your claim is a given and that anyone who doesn't agree with you is refusing to "accept the facts".
| Andrespetmonkey said: Never said there wasn't any corruption in scandinivia, there is. Just not a lot according to the statistics:
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Note how it says "corruption perceptions index". All that tells us is how people view their politicians, not whether they're actually more corrupt. Something like that is nigh-on impossible to measure.
| SamuelRSmith said: I dislike Scandinavia being used as a poster boy for socialism for multiple reasons. 1) Most of Sweden's largest and richest companies were founded before the socialist party ever existed. Ikea and Volvo (perhaps Sweden's two most famous brands) certainly were, and Sweden was unregulated capitalism, back then. 2) Scandinavia is an extremely resource-rich region, with small, indigenous populations who have a (stereotypically) strong work ethic. What part of the world wouldn't do well with these circumstances? 3) Scandinavia is an extremely "safe" region. Very little war, or natural disasters have plagued the countries. They are also surrounded by extremely affluent and friendly neighbours with great trade policies between them. What region or country wouldn't do well with the above circumstances? Capitalistic or socialistic? It's a shame that no other region in the world has similar circumstances, but with a far more capitalistic society. I'd argue that the capitalistic version would probably be far better off than Scandinavia. |
This guy gets it!
A Scandinavian country could be governed by a retarded chimp and he'd still make a good job of it. They have so many advantages that they should be top of the world without even trying. Indeed, I'd say that they're underperforming, when you take into account all the advantages they have.
Hell, if people are going to use places like Norway and Sweden as poster-children for socialism, I'm gonna use Zimbabwe as my poster child for capitalism. See what a mess they're in? Their socialist policies are obviously to blame!
